{"id":16604,"date":"2022-08-25T16:03:35","date_gmt":"2022-08-25T20:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mhgoldberg.com\/blog\/?p=16604"},"modified":"2022-08-28T16:36:06","modified_gmt":"2022-08-28T20:36:06","slug":"feeding-at-the-funding-trough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mhgoldberg.com\/blog\/?p=16604","title":{"rendered":"Feeding at the funding trough"},"content":{"rendered":"

The story of the government engaging an anti-racism consultant with a history of “disturbing comments”<\/a> has been chronicled here for more than a year (see: July 2021: Funding Hate<\/a>; April 2022: Purveying hate on the public dime<\/a>; and, Government funded hate speech<\/a>). Thanks to amplification from Jonathan Kay’s twitter feed<\/a>, the story has made its way into the mainstream media, leading (at last) to a government response<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As I wrote last week<\/a>, the government (and even some opposition members) knew about the problem much earlier, but did not act until the matter became a more public priority. The reasons for this inaction can be the subject of further investigation by the Parliamentary Heritage Committee, or others.<\/p>\n

While the focus these past couple weeks has been on the Anti-racism Action Program funding, some may want to explore the ease by which “public interest” groups, such as the one under the microscope, can feed at various troughs of cash in Ottawa.<\/p>\n

I raised questions in July of 2021<\/a> about a CRTC award<\/a> of $16,815.10 to CMAC in May of that year. The CRTC awarded<\/a> an additional $15,332.48 a few months later (October 2021), paring back CMAC’s original request by $2000 “in order to be considered reasonable and necessarily incurred”. In each case, all but $2069.55 (paid to another CMAC consultant) was claimed by Laith Marouf. <\/p>\n

In addition, the Broadcast Participation Fund<\/a> (BPF) represents a pot of cash available to groups since its establishment by the CRTC in 2012<\/a>. According to the CRTC<\/a>, the mandate of the BPF is:<\/p>\n

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